Vintage Misery: Part Three (complete)

By the time I woke up, my neck hurt, which was giving me a headache. I sat up in the bed and looked around, eyes bleary and mind hazy. I was having trouble piecing together what had happened over the last day or so. I hissed from the cold as the wooden floor met my bare feet, and considered staying in bed until it got warm. But everything was so dark I couldn’t tell up from down, day from night, or even right from left.

“Neil?” I muttered as I rubbed my eyes. The one that struck the rock in Mercy’s lawn was still very sore. “Neil? Where are you?”

No answer. That was new. “Shit.” I rose from the bed, feeling lightheaded. Lightheaded with a headache. That was new. I shuffled around the room. “Neil, I could really use you! Come out now!”

The door opened and light flooded in. I covered my eyes, which burned as if they had been pressed against a grill. “Oh, look, Beth’s little friend is up.” The woman chuckled as she strutted into the room. “Beth’s not here at the moment. Why don’t you just get back in bed?”

“I really have to go,” I grumbled. “Have you seen my bag?”

She put her hand on my shoulder, leading me back towards the bed. “No.”

“Who are you?” I grumped.

“Yvie,” she stated simply as she had me sit back down on the bed. As my eyes adjusted I could see Yvie was one of the girls who had passed by the night the sorority girls were murdered. She had long, shiny, straight hair with razor-sharp bangs, and wore big, dangling earrings and a lot of bracelets.

“I’d like to just go, please,” I muttered. “I need to get the bus. What time is it?”

“Beth will be back shortly.” Yvie touched my face and smoothed away my hair, a strangely intimate gesture. “You feel a bit cold. You should warm up a bit.”

“I have a headache,” I huffed. “You’re getting a bit close.” I put my hand on her shoulder and pushed back a bit.

“Alice, was it?” Yvie smirked. “You’re just as cute as Beth said you were.”

My cheeks prickled as color rushed into them. “Listen…”

“… out.” Neil’s voice faded in and out like bad radio signal. “… bad thing! … out!”

I pushed against Yvie as she came closer to me. Her lips touched mine, and I was too weak to fend her off. She pushed me onto the bed and bit my lip. I was pinned by her weight, barely able to move, and then the bed toppled. One of the legs must have given out, or Neil came through for me. As soon as we fell off the bed, I stood up and put a chair in front of me while Yvie just laughed. It wasn’t until then I realized my lip was bleeding.

“You don’t want to have a little fun with me?” Yvie chuckled.

“Not particularly!” I wiped my lip. “You’re a little too rough for my taste!”

Yvie licked her lips. “I’ll make you feel so much better, though.”

I brandished the chair and moved around Yvie. “I’m good!” I saw my bag on the floor, and dropped the chair to grab it and run out the door. I didn’t care if I never found my shoes. I’d go barefoot if I had to. I rushed down the hallway with Yvie not too far behind me.

Another girl popped her head out of a room, a massive mop of crimped, curly dirty-blond hair. She smiled and emerged to block me, trapping me between her and Yvie. “What have you got, Yvie?” she giggled.

“I’ve found Beth’s new friend, Millie.” Yvie snickered. “I think I scared her.”

I looked back and forth and scoffed. “You’re both fucking weird!” I pushed my way around Millie, using my bag like a shield. I remembered there had been four of them, including Beth, so I needed to be ready for the next one to pop out and scare me. By then I was in the foyer, and I could see the front door and my freedom straight ahead.

“Run!” Neil’s voice was still in the distance, fading in and out of my conscious mind.

I grabbed hold of the doorknob, and then I was snatched around the waist and pulled back. My bag hit the ground as I was set at the foot of the stairs. “Be nice to her, Adele. We’d hate to return her to Beth bruised.”

Adele was tall, not exactly broad but not exactly petite either. She had a lovely face, although I didn’t think any of the girls were particularly attractive at that moment, and buzz-cut, platinum-bleached hair with a braided headband wrapped around her skull.

“Beth told us to keep her here,” Adele said. “I was just making sure she didn’t go.”

I wasn’t about to run up any stairs, not after last time. But Neil was trying to warn me, and I bet the headache was the reason I was having a hard time perceiving him. This was frustrating, and a little bit terrifying. I was getting sick of being scared.

There was a knock on the door, and all three sisters turned at once to look. Yvie approached it. “Who’s there?”

“I’m looking for Alice Young.” It was the voice of Officer Mercy. “I dropped her off here yesterday, and I found her wallet in my car. I was wondering if she was still here.”

Yesterday? Did I sleep a full twenty-four hours? I was about to shout, but Adele grabbed me and forced her hand over my mouth.

“No, she left yesterday,” Yvie sighed. “But you can leave her wallet here.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Officer Mercy said despondently.

I guessed Neil was still looking out for me, because Adele lost her footing on the stair and let go of me. “I’m here!” I shouted. “Officer Mercy! It's me! Al!” I managed to get to the door, but Yvie held me off, glaring at me like she intended to kill me.

“Oh, my mistake,” Yvie snarled.

I opened the door as Millie pulled Yvie back. It was pitch-black outside. I really did sleep for a whole day! I reached back, grabbing my bag off the floor before I went to join Officer Mercy on the porch. “What’s going on?” he asked.

I took my wallet from his hand and shoved it back into my bag. “Thanks,” I huffed.

A concerned look filled Mercy’s face. “You’re bleeding. Are you okay?”

I looked back at the door to the house and grimaced. “Just get me out of here. I made a mistake coming here. I made a huge mistake coming to this town.” I walked off the front porch and made a beeline to his car.

“You don’t have shoes!”

“I’m done answering questions.” I heaved myself into the car and sat there with the door closed. My ears were ringing, my head was a wet soup of pain.

Officer Mercy got back into his car and started the engine, and only then did I feel some relief. “Are you okay?” he asked again.

I held up a finger. “Ever since you knocked on my door, life has been nothing but a massive pain in my neck. I’ve obviously been pulled into something and I really don’t like how messy it’s gotten. I just want to get on a bus and get the hell out of here. So no, I am not okay.”

Mercy just looked straight ahead. “Well, if this helps with anything, after I talked with you, I did some digging.” He patted a folder next to him on the seat. “There’s a bit of dark history to the Alpha Sigma Alpha house.”

I opened the folder to find copies of old newspaper clippings and a couple of book passages. “Hervé House Horror,” I muttered. “Dozens of missing persons cases are attributed to local butcher Louis Hervé, who shared the house with his ailing wife and her sisters. Hervé is thought to have killed, butchered and served the corpses as meat in his shop…” I stopped and looked at Mercy. “What does this have to do with anything?”

“Those girls were butchered, like in a slaughterhouse,” Mercy said. “Even with the bites taken out of them.”

“So you think the ghost of this Hervé guy is killing them? There were no ghosts in that house! None at all. Trust me, I know the feel of a spectral presence better than a hot bath. That house was clean.”

Mercy frowned. “But don’t you think that it’s odd?”

I thought of that awful underground basement filled with corpses. How many more were under the water? Hell, the bones of Hervé’s victims were probably still down there too. “Does Hervé have any surviving relatives?” I asked.

Mercy shook his head. “I thought the same thing. He and his wife never had children, she was thought to be too sickly. Once Hervé was caught and tried, she and her sisters moved away to escape the scandal.”

I set the papers aside. “It’s not my concern, then.”

“You don’t care at all?”

I stared out the window. “I want to get out of here before your boss finds out anything else about me. You can’t tell me he’s not looking.”

Mercy pulled up at a stop sign. We sat there in the darkness, car running, lights beaming across the asphalt. “Is there something to find?”

“Something he can use,” I muttered.

Mercy took his foot off the brake and started to put his foot on the gas, when it sounded like something hit the side of the car.

“What was that?” I gasped.

Mercy stopped again and a scratching noise filled the car, like something crawling on top. Something struck the side of the car again, sending it into a perilous lean on two tires. Once it landed again, Mercy hit the gas and sped off. White hands came down over the window - long and spindly, like those of the creature Beth drew for me. I screamed and Mercy hit the brakes hard, sending the thing on top of the car toppling down. Then Mercy hit the gas again, driving over whatever was on top of us and not stopping.

“Holy shit!” I yelled.

“Not good! Not good!” I could hear Neil as clear as day in the back.

“What the fuck was that?” Mercy’s voice trembled from panic.

“Just drive! Just drive!” Neil screamed.

“Just drive! Drive!” I echoed.

Mercy sped on for a long while, never stopping, turning on his sirens to bypass the sparse traffic in town. We stopped in the diner parking lot, in the light and near people, and sat in the car stunned, silent, and uncertain. “I’ve seen some shit in my life,” Mercy muttered. “My mom had us study crime scenes, bad ones too. But I have never seen anything like…”

“Monster hands?”

Mercy nodded. “Was that what it was?”

I pressed my lips into a firm line. “I don’t know what’s happening here.” I looked in the rearview mirror to see the faint outline of Neil, and sighed with relief. I could perceive him again. I had been so scared when I couldn’t. “I’ve never experienced anything like this.”

“Never?” Mercy asked.

“I’ve seen every sort of ghost, whatever you can name. I always thought, or at least hoped, that monsters weren’t real. Not the ones in stories. No Bigfoot, no bogeyman, no goblins or werewolves. But…”

“Vampires,” I heard Neil say.

“What?” I furrowed my brow.

“Your lip,” Mercy said. “It’s bleeding again.”

I touched my chin and felt the warm blood trickling from my lip, down my chin, and onto my neck. “Here,” Mercy handed me his handkerchief. “Clean yourself up.”

I took it, wiping up as much as I could. “Thanks. And sorry.”

“I don’t think you’re to blame for this.” He leaned onto the steering wheel. “At least, I hope you aren’t. That’d be a lot to put on a lady.”

I chuckled, checking the handkerchief before pressing it back onto my lip. “I’d be used to it.” I leaned back in the seat, looking up at the sky that stretched far above us. There were so many stars here, away from the city lights. I wondered how that was possible.

Mercy opened his car door and stepped out. He looked it over, and even in the shadows I could see his shocked expression before he leaned back in through the window. “Let’s go get something to eat. I’m done being in this car.”

I stepped out, remembering I didn’t have any shoes. I decided it didn’t matter, then closed the door and saw claw marks in the metal. “Well…” I sucked in my breath and held it.

“We need to go,” Neil said to me as he came out of the car. “Those girls, those… things! They drank your blood, Al! They’re vampires.”

That was a lot to take in. For me, vampires were men like Bela Lugosi, Christoper Lee, etc. “Are you sure?”

“I saw them!” he hissed, bloodshot eyes panicked. “But because you were unconscious, I couldn’t do anything to stop them.”

I felt around my neck, which had been sore since morning. Sure enough, near the back, I found an extremely sore spot. “Who did it?”

Neil bounced in place. “The creepy ones, the three that tried to keep you there.”

“What about Beth?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

I looked down at the pavement, then turned to Mercy as he stepped near me. “I forgot you didn’t have any shoes on. We can get you something when the shops open.”

“Yeah, okay.” I followed him into the diner. The place and people were virtually unchanged since I was there with Beth - shit, two days ago. I sat down with Officer Mercy, trying to angle my legs so my feet didn’t touch the floor. This was bad. What if Beth was being held hostage by these women? What if she was their feed bag, and they were going to keep me as another one? I then bit down on the tip of my tongue. What if they had killed those girls?

“If you want, you can stay with me until you can get a bus out of here,” he says. “I don’t mind at all. No one has to know you’re still here.”

I nodded in silence.

“I came out here hoping it’d be more peaceful and quiet than what I was used to. Guess you get big scares everywhere you go. Even small towns like this one have their dirty, awful secrets,” Mercy chuckled as he looked over the menu.

I ordered waffles and coffee again, as well as biscuits and gravy, hash browns, and a side of grits. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten in twenty-fours, and who knew how much of my blood those bitches took. I felt much better after eating - my headache was vanishing, and my neck felt less stiff. Even my lip had stopped bleeding.

Once the fog in my brain had dispersed, I decided to tell Officer Mercy what I found at the Alpha Sigma Alpha house. “Look, don’t ask me how I know this… but if you check the fifth step on the main stairs at the sorority, you’ll see it comes loose. It leads down into a cavern that’s filled with water and a lot of dead people.”

“Fucking finally!” Neil heaved in relief. “See? Had you just told him before, we could have avoided this thing completely! It’s about time you told me I’m right!”

Mercy went stiff and his eyes narrowed at me. “Are you serious?”

“I wish I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to say anything about this at all, especially since your boss seems to hate me. But Beth asked me to go back into that house just to make sure. I did, only because she offered a lot of money. And, quite literally, the ground was pulled out from under me. I fell into that underground lake and found myself in a heap of death.”

Mercy sat back and his eyes fell to the table. “So, the night you wandered into my backyard…”

“The exit was under the overpass,” I murmured. “You can probably get to it easier that way.”

“Are you sure?”

I gave him a short nod. “Positive. I’ve seen a lot of horrible things in my life, but nothing like that.”

Mercy sighed and slouched his shoulders. “I’ll go and look for it. Once I confirm its existence, I can report it to the chief. I’ll just tell him I got a report of a bad smell or something.” He rubbed his arm, then raised his eyes again. “Is it really that bad?”

“Afraid so,” I murmured, then immediately felt regret. “I’ll go with you. But I’ll need shoes first.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I want to. It’s the least I can do. Besides, I have to make sure you find this mess. Maybe it’ll help solve a few cases and get you in good with your boss.” I smiled, although I didn’t really feel like it.

We got some cheap shoes at a discount store down the street. Then we drove to the overpass, parking the car at the side of the road and walked down to the water. Once there, I could see the opened grate I had exited a couple of days ago.

“You really wanna go back in there?” Neil asked.

I nodded, then held my hand out as if asking him to stay put. “Let’s go, Mercy.” I led him into the water, towards the grate. He turned on his flashlight to examine the hole beneath before leading the way. I followed after him, chills prickling all over my body.

We came out into the big cavern, and Mercy’s flashlight landed on some of the corpses on the patch of earth across from us. His hand flinched, and he nearly dropped the flashlight. He continued to search the area, despite his own discomfort and horror. “This is…”

I pointed up. “You can see where the stairs lead up, and where the basement of the house ends.” I placed my hand on his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here, Mercy.”

He was shaking under my palm. “That one over there,” he whispered. “I recognize the shirt… Her mother said she came home, but…”

I pulled on his arm. “Let’s go.” I managed to dislodge him from his spot, leading him back out of that horrible place. I took him towards the car, but when we got there, Officer Pitbull was waiting.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here? Still in town, little lady?” he chuckled. Then he turned to Mercy and grimaced. “Officer Mercy, what the fuck happened to your patrol car?”

“Sir,” Mercy was still trying to process the horror of that underground space. He started to speak, but he doubled over and heaved up his entire breakfast onto Officer Pitbull’s shoes.

“Oh no,” Neil whined.

Mercy choked, throwing up a second round. Office Pitbull pushed him aside, and Mercy fell against his squad car as he came towards me, grabbing me by the arm. “You’re coming with me.”

“On what grounds?” I snapped at him. “Get your hands off me!”

“Dead bodies!” Mercy finally managed to spit out. “Over there. Lots of them!”

Officer Pitbull gave me an unpleasant smile. “Like grandfather, like granddaughter. Isn’t that right, Ms. Young?”

I tried to yank my arm free, but the bastard was a lot stronger than I gave his doughy body for. He threw me into the back of his police car, despite the protests of Mercy, then drove off with me, spewing dirt as he went. “I found out a few things about you, Ms. Young,” he chuckled. “Thought you could hide from it forever?”

“I have no connections to that man!” I snapped at him.

“But you’re his granddaughter, and sickness can run in bloodlines.”

“I’m not blood-related to him, either!” I screamed.

Officer Pitbull hit his brakes hard, making me slam into the cage. “Shut up back there.”

“Motherfucker.” I clutched my already beaten and bloodied face. My lip was starting to bleed again.

“Daughter of Ivan and Amy Young, famous ghost hunters and exorcists. Sick fuckers all the way around. Not to mention your grandfather, Walter. Or should I say the God’s Womb killer” Now I wanted to throw up on his shoes, too. “Killed over thirty women, trying to find the perfect mother for the return of his god,” he sneered at me, then clicked his tongue. “Apples don’t fall too far from the tree.”

“I keep telling you, I have no connection to that man,” I snarled hatefully at him. “He wasn’t my grandfather, and I never even met the man. He was long dead before I ever was a thought. And we don’t share blood at all! You can’t use any of this to hold me.”

“Officer Mercy certainly gave me enough. If there are bodies, that means we’ve found you right at the scene of the crime.” He pulled up to the police station, then turned around, removing his glasses and looking at me dead in the eye. “I know some sick motherfucker like you is responsible for this. All you Satanists are.”

I could hear Mercy’s car pulling up beside us then. “I’m not a Satanist! My dad is Catholic!”

Officer Pitbull stepped out of his car just as Mercy rushed up. He chased us inside the station, trying to explain, but Pitbull wasn’t listening, and Mercy might as well have been a ghost like Neil. Pitbull opened a cell door and threw me in. “Stay away from here, Mercy. In fact, stay away from me.” He shoved him against the bars of the cell. “Officer Martin! You and Perkins go to the overpass and search for anything down there.”

Mercy turned and looked back at me, guilt in his eyes. “Just leave,” I sighed as I sat down on the hard bunk and leaned my back against the wall.

“But you’re innocent!”

I shook my head. “It’s easier to get yourself out of this now than try to pull yourself up later.” I shrugged and tilted my head up. “He’s not going to listen to you, and I doubt anyone else will.”

“It’s not right,” Mercy huffed. “I’ll try and tell him. Someone! Anyone who will listen to me. I know it's not you.”

I closed my eyes. “Just make sure Beth is okay. Tell her I left town and that I’m sorry, but just go to her house and make sure she’s safe. I don’t trust those other girls there.”

“What do you mean?” Mercy asked.

I opened my eyes and turned back to him. “Just keep your gun with you, that’s all I ask. Are silver bullets a thing?”

His brow pinched. “No. That’s just stories.”

“Then regular bullets should be fine.” I huffed and touched my neck, feeling where it was sore. “Don’t keep your neck exposed either. Just in case.”

“Alice, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I never should have knocked on your door.”

“Can’t stop it now,” I sighed. “What’s done is done.”

His hand slipped away from the bars. “I’ll go check on Beth, like you asked. I’ll make sure someone hears the truth too.”

“Just go.”

Mercy left, and Neil came back through the bars. He sat down beside me, placing his hand over mine. “I can get the keys and open the cell door.”

“Not yet.”